1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dividing section in a disc accommodation section in a disc changer. Particularly, the invention relates to a dividing device in a disc accommodation section in a disc changer that divides the accommodation section in the up and down directions in order to reproduce the content of a disc accommodated in the accommodation section and to exchange the disc, in the disc changer that has plural discs accommodated in the accommodation section and can exchange a content-reproduction disc.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a cassette tape has been the mainstream medium recorded with music to provide music in a motor vehicle. However, a disc medium (hereinafter simply referred to as a disc) such as a compact disc (CD) and a mini disc (MD) is now mainly used in place of the cassette tape. Because the disc medium is thinner than the cassette tape, and particularly because an optical disc is not in a case, a disc changer that accommodates plural discs in a reproducing unit and reproduces the recorded content by changing the discs is popular. A disc changer is also being developed for a digital versatile disc (DVD) type of optical disc.
This disc changer of optical discs has a disc accommodation section capable of separately accommodating plural discs, one by one, inside a casing. A swing arm takes out a desired one of the discs from this disc accommodation section, and reproduces the content of the disc using an optical head. When the reproduction ends, the swing arm returns the disc to the disc accommodation section. In general, a turntable on which a disc is rotated and a clamper that fixes the disc onto the turntable are provided at the front end of the swing arm. An optical head moves in a radial direction of the optical disk, on a moving path formed on the swing arm, on the disc that rotates on the turntable, thereby reproducing the information recorded on the disc. Generally, the disc changer has the disc accommodation section movably arranged, in the up and down directions, to facilitate the taking out of a desired one disc from the disc accommodation section.
In order to draw out one disc and reproduce the content of this disc using the swing arm, the disc changer of the CD needs to have space above and below the disc to be drawn out from the accommodation section to allow the swing arm to enter the space at the time of drawing the disc. For this purpose, according to the conventional disc changer, discs located below the content-reproduced disc are moved, or the accommodation section is divided into several parts.
An early CD disc changer was large in size, and was accommodated in a trunk of a motor vehicle. However, due to an increasingly compact size of the disc changer in recent years, the disc drive unit that incorporates the disc changer can be accommodated in a center console of an instrument panel of the motor vehicle.
However, as a result of the small disc changer in the disc drive unit, there is little margin in the parts within the disc changer. Consequently, the operation of a dividing mechanism in the disc accommodation section becomes unstable at the time of drawing out a disc, of which content is to be reproduced, to the swing arm. Further, according to the conventional disc changer, after the disc accommodation section is divided into the upper and lower directions with a cam, a height of the stoppage of the accommodation section is selected, and a disc extraction device enters the space between laminated parts of the accommodation section. Therefore, the operation stroke at the time of dividing the accommodation section is long, and a total size of the disc drive unit becomes large.